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Hello everyone,

I was supposed to take the December LSAT, but I was barely breaking 170 on my PTs the week before and don't want to sit for the exam until I'm confident I can score 170+ with the common -3 test day drop (figured im on the unlucky side of that statistic). If I reach my target score in February, would it be stupid to apply for fall 2016? I know it'll hurt my chances at the t14, but I'd really be happy going to UT on scholarship. It's not imperative that I go to law school next year, but I would rather not take another year off- especially with the affirmative action Supreme Court case decision coming this June. I'm a URM with a 3.8 undergrad GPA. Any insight is appreciated.

There is some speculation that it won't even affect admissions to some degree, there was some debate about it a few months ago and some ongoing discussion in the AA thread. Even so, there are only a certain number of URMs scoring 170+, so even if the schools aren't required to "diversify" their student body, it is likely in their interest to do so. If you are getting 170s on your PTs and have a 3.8 GPA at graduation though, you won't have to worry about the URM boost as you will be in the running for big scholarships at a bunch of schools anyways. At which point I would wait until next cycle to apply. You may PT in the range, but if you haven't taken a real LSAT yet, you don't know how you will fare. You may need to retake in June or something. Just bank on sitting out a year. If you can get mid-170s, you won't have much concern with going anywhere you want.